Twitter’s international marketing lead among planned layoffs

Twitter’s international marketing director Niamh O’Reilly is among those who have been given notice that the company plans to lay them off.

The social media platform is believed to be cutting around half of its 7,500 global workforce on Friday following a hostile takeover by Elon Musk.

In the UK, workers have been told the company plans to inform and consult employee representatives before potential redundancies take place on Tuesday, as required by employment law.

O’Reilly has been Twitter’s international marketing director since joining the company from Sony in 2015.

Gordon MacMillan, who was Twitter’s lead content strategy manager, EMEA, and a former editor of Haymarket’s Brand Republic, was also laid off, along with most of Twitter’s communications and marketing teams.

Campaign understands that Twitter’s core UK-based sales team have been largely unaffected, but there have been cuts to support staff in research, data, business marketing and events.

Twitter reportedly employs around 1,000 staff at its UK headquarters in London. It also has offices in Manchester and Dublin.

The social media platform did not respond to Campaign when contacted this morning.

Since Musk acquired the company, several large brands – including Audi, General Mills and General Motors – have paused paid advertising on the platform amid concerns that Musk could scale back content moderation of the platform, which could create a less brand safe environment.

IPG Mediabrands has advised its clients to pause advertising on Twitter.

Musk has acknowledged the platform’s revenue has taken a hit due to advertisers pulling spend but said cuts were necessary due to the platform losing $4 million a day.

He said content moderation would remain a focus for the platform.

According to Platformer’s Casey Newton, some staff Twitter had planned to lay off have been asked to return.

Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops! ��

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022